Lovely many colored drought-tolerant Cosmos blooms spring through first frost!

The most fabulous choices to grow are a diversity of flowering multipurpose companion plants with your veggies! If that includes being a native plant, hallelujah!

Companion Planting maximizes your connections!

Companions plants may be other vegetables, like Radish! It is grown for the bulb, can be planted as a living mulch understory, can be let to grow up among cukes and zukes to repel cucumber beetle, is a trap for flea beetles, makes lovely edible flowers! We eat Cilantro leaves, it repels aphids, it’s flowers attract pollinators, the seeds become Coriander on your spice shelf.

Some companions are colorful! Calendula! Chamomile is bright beauty. Arugula and radish flowers are delicate and detailed! Some flowers are total dainty princesses – cilantro, carrot and celery, the three Cs! Let arugula, cilantro, chamomile, a carrot or two, and a celery go to flower summer through fall to bring bees, butterflies and beneficial insects – pollinators! Besides being beautiful and having lovely scents, let them seed out for seeds for next year’s plantings, to share at the seed swap, give as gifts! Carrots love being with cilantro and chamomile, and chamomile improves the flavor of any neighboring herb!

And what if they are not companions?! Grow beauty for the pollinators just because you love beauty and your special little friends! Flying insects are the most common pollinators. From Cornell: Native bees are two to three times more effective than honeybees! A special note about the importance ofBumble bees!Honey bees DON’T pollinate tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, eggplant or blueberries, but bumble bees DO! Bumblebees do what is called buzz pollination, sonication! Please see all about it in Sue Rosenthal’s post atBay Nature!See the PBS Bumblebee Buzz Pollination video!

Be careful with those lovely hybrids, especially ‘double-blooms.’ A slight change in scent or shape and your pollinator may not be able to recognize them.

Design for Habitat and No Pesticides!

When you are thinking where to put things, select permanent spots for herbs, gateway points for flowers and edible flowers! Designate a permanent patch for year round flower habitat for bees. Cilantro is both tasty and has lovely feathery leaves and flowers in breeze, great pollinator food. Chamomile is downright heady scented on a warm morning. Comfrey, Knitbone, is both medicinal, healing (arthritis/bones), and speeds your compost, is high in soil nutrition. Poppies are beautiful; humble white Sweet Alyssum is dainty and attracts beneficial insects. Calendula traps aphids, whiteflies, and thrips! Marigolds are brilliant and called the workhorse of pest deterrents! Cosmos is cosmic! Breadseed Poppies will literally have your bees rolling in pollen!

Prairie Nursery in Westfield WI says: Pollinators are attracted to blooms that fit the pollinators’ physiological traits – specifically the length of their tongue. Some bees are generalists, flitting among flowers to drink nectar and collect pollen from many plant species. Flat or shallow blossoms, such as asters or coreopsis, attract a variety of bee species. But long-tongued bees will be attracted to plants with deeper nectaries and flowers with petals that form long tubes. The inclusion of a variety of floral shapes [and sizes] attracts a more diverse array of pollinators.

Grouping plants in clumps of three or more attracts bees to the plants and allows them to forage efficiently. And don’t forget the water. Pollinators get thirsty while they are working in the sun! They like shallow water sources. A shallow birdbath with stones in it is perfect!

Farmers are planting wildflower rows! See Stripes of Wildflowers! The stripy fields have been planted across England and other countries as part of a trial to boost the natural predators of pests that attack cereal crops and potentially cut pesticide spraying! Plant flowers among, alongside, your veggies! In fact, plant your flowers right in the center of things where they can serve several plants at once! Make that a short walk, or fly, for your beneficial insects! You may not plant stripes six metres wide, but do grow plenty of flowers the length of your area!

Current UCDavis research published Dec 18, 2018 says “Planting wildflowers is a key strategy promoted nationally to support wild and managed bees,” said Williams. “Successful adoption of these plantings in agricultural landscapes will require that they not only support pollinators but that they also avoid supporting too many pests. Plant selection going forward will need to balance multiple goals of pollinators pest management and other functions. This research is a first step on the path to identifying plants that will meet these goals.”

Some bee species are active all year, others only in April and May, still others in July and August, and all need food! New queens are born in the fall, and after breeding they may find a place to hibernate for the winter. When they emerge in spring, they need nectar and pollen sources—or they can’t start their colonies.

Spring

California poppy, Eschscholzia californica is technically an annual, but they will “perennial-ize” by sprouting the following year from their roots and lower stems or by re-seeding. Look for sweat bees scrambling around the bottom of the flower and covering themselves with pollen.

Blanket flower, × grandiflora is a colorful daisy-type flower popular with a number of native bees. In the Valley they attract long-horned bees like Melissodes which can be easily observed collecting nectar and pollen from the showy orange and yellow flowers. This plant may be short-lived in heavy soils. Image by Cerena Childress, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden.
Fall

Germander sage,Salvia chamaedryoides blooms with beautiful dark blue flowers from late spring to early summer and again in fall. It is a primary nectar source for a number of bee types. Male carder bees may be most noticeable as they set up territories around flowering patches and knock into other bees that enter their area. Deadheading spent flowers in early summer will help the blossoms (and the bees) return in fall..

Winter

Goodwin Creek lavender,Lavandula × ginginsii ‘Goodwin Creek Grey’ hybrid lavender is a tough and long-blooming sub-shrub that can be used to provide winter structure to your pollinator planting. Blooming early and lasting into summer, it is popular with large carpenter bees and a range of other smaller bees for its nectar. It can be pruned to shape, to increase branching, or to keep a compact form. Image at UCDavis Arboretum

Grow host plants for butterfly & moth caterpillars too! Some are quite particular, even to only one kind of plant.

Other special pollinators!

Don’t forget the other littles! Butterflies, midges, beetles! Wasps, ants and flies, even slugs! Some of them will make you more happy than others, but thank them too for pollinating!

Bird pollination even has a name, Ornithophily! In the US, hummingbirds are key in wildflower pollination.

About 87% of flowering plants are pollinated by animals. These include wild flowers and those used by people for food and medicine. While many ground plants benefit from small mammals’ pollination, some flowering trees rely on similar relationships with tree-dwelling or flying mammals. Bats are probably the best known mammal pollinators. Hundreds of plants rely on these busy, flying nectar lovers to spread their pollen at night.

The ‘little dragons,’ lizards and skinks, not only pollinate, but eat insect pests!

Where your pollinators live!

Flowers are much more than a pretty face! They are habitat. That means food and shelter, moisture – the morning dew, and for many wild bees, a place to sleep at night! You don’t always see them because they generally get up earlier than Honeybees.

First and foremost, just because your flowers are done, doesn’t mean beneficial insects don’t still need food and living quarters. Be more conscious about planting permanent habitat for them. Plus, if you have year ’round habitat, they will be ready to work for you as soon as your plants are up!

Stripes of Wildflowers says they plant oxeye daisy, red clover, common knapweed and wild carrot. Likely they carefully chose those plants for the results hoped for. This combination probably serves the majority of common beneficial predators, large to small, needed to replace those pesticides.

Oxeye daisy is a pretty little perennial – grows year after year, no replanting necessary.

Depending on your climate, Red Clover, a legume, is a perennial that has the added advantage that as they die they also feed the soil the flowers are growing in!

Common knapweed is a tall, thistle-like grassland perennial that doesn’t like wet areas or acidic soil.

Wild carrot (Daucus carota), also known as Queen Anne’s lace, is a biennial plant in the parsley family. The flower head has trillions of tiny flowers! It is perfect for smaller beneficial insects, strongly attracts Syrphid flies aka Hoverflies!

The common factor here is by planting perennials and self-seeders, there is always habitat, and no replanting necessary! Though Wild carrot is a biennial, it self-seeds like crazy, keeping a constant supply of flowers! Your choice of flowers, that insects love, that bloom all year long and are there all the time, is garden wisdom!

Honey bees have their hives, but native bees don’t. Most species of wild bees are solitary, and some 70 percent of them dig a nest in the ground to raise their young—something they can’t do if mulch is in the way. Leave a little bare ground and protect it from being stepped on! No mulch needed! They favor a slight slope or well drained site.

Install some living quarters, a bee block or bee hotel, which are available online or at some garden stores. Bee hotels are a pollinator’s paradise! Pollinators’ housing needs are hugely diverse! Bare soil, hollow twigs, big holes in trees, little holes of only a certain depth. You could also drill holes of varying sizes in a dead tree that’s still standing (if beetles haven’t already done it for you). You can easily build them yourself! They can be simple and small or a luxury condo like this one! See more! Please see these super useful detailed tips here!

Put your bee home up in March or early April! This will offer prime nesting sites for solitary bees for laying their eggs. Soon they will be buzzing, hovering and feasting about your veggie garden! Plant their favorite flower foods in time to feed them! See more about their favorite food!

• A 25% uptick in participation in its forum, “Gardening for Bees and Butterflies.
• A 45% increase in searches relating to pollination.
• 140,000 photos of pollinator-friendly plants and pollinators uploaded.

For those of you with space for shrubs and trees, find out the best varieties to seasonally support our precious pollinators all year long! If you don’t have big space, plant your mini bloomers in containers, on your apt balcony, wherever you can! Don’t forget to plant the street strip with drought tolerant abundantly flowering native plants, buckwheat might be one! Check with your local nurseries that support pollinators, local botanic gardens, master gardeners, for the best plant choices for your area.

Plant significant, do-the-job flowers for bees, the colors they love the most! Plant for pollinators of all kinds, plant for the good-guy predators! Do it in your yard, in your veggie garden, along the street! Make your life a lovely Meadow!

The Green Bean Connection newsletter started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara city community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!